With new dome, ERAU reaches for stars

Tuesday

Jul 2, 2013 at 11:57 AMJul 2, 2013 at 10:17 PM

With almost surgical precision, four cables were attached to a more than 9-ton galvanized steel dome that was hoisted 80 feet in the air and slowly placed on top of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University's new College of Arts & Sciences building.

DEBORAH CIRCELLIEDUCATION WRITER

DAYTONA BEACH — With almost surgical precision, four cables were attached to a more than 9-ton galvanized steel dome that was hoisted 80 feet in the air and slowly placed on top of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University's new College of Arts & Sciences building. "It's like a giant Erector set," Bob Buraszeski, general superintendent with Perry-McCall Construction, said Tuesday as he watched workers on top of the building secure the observation dome. "It's quite an adrenaline rush, that's for sure." The retractable dome, which is 15 feet high and about 30 feet in diameter, was built by Ash Dome of Illinois to house the largest university-based telescope in Florida, school officials said. The dome sits on top of a tower contained within the building, but the tower is independent of the building to avoid shaking from elevators, people walking, or the heating and air-conditioning systems. The dome, along with a much smaller one that will be used to track the sun, costs about $220,000, according to Chris Hardesty, Embry-Riddle's director of planning and construction. "The dome opens to let the telescope look to the sky and then it closes to protect the telescope," Hardesty said. The telescope will be placed inside the dome in early December when the 140,000-square-foot, five-story building — which costs about $40 million — is completed. Students and faculty will able to use the telescope starting in January. The dome is bolted to a wheel system that allows the dome and telescope to rotate electronically 360-degrees, Hardesty said. Images from the telescope will be fed electronically to monitors throughout the building. Embry-Riddle President John Johnson, who watched from his office balcony along with other executives as a crowd of students and faculty gathered outside the building, described the dome as "futuristic" and a culmination of years of planning to expand the building and its academic programs. "This puts into solid form our dream for this new College of Arts and Sciences building," Johnson said. "It's really a sight to behold." The new dome and telescope is a "big step" in continuing to make Embry-Riddle the "go-to place" for applied research for the aerospace and aviation engineering industry, said Richard Heist, chief academic officer. While the university already has astronomy courses, it plans to offer a new bachelor's degree in astronomy in the fall of 2015. The observation area on the roof, which will also be open at various times to the community and area schools, will include six smaller telescopes plus the large 1-meter diameter telescope totaling $2 million, Hardesty said. The new telescope is twice the diameter of the university's current telescope, according to Peter Erdman, a physics professor who has worked the past 10 years on getting the new observatory and telescope. "What it will do is allow us to see dimmer objects because it collects more light," Erdman said. With new detectors and the telescope, Erdman said the university and community will be able to see objects 10 times dimmer than what they can now see. "We see the whole observatory as a symbol for the arts and sciences building," he added. Student Chris Daroux, 28, of Cleveland, who is finishing his bachelor's in engineering physics, said the new telescope represents is not just about having the best or the biggest, but "bringing the wonder of space to the community."